mikeprichard

Ess-Eschas, thanks for the quick and helpful reply - I appreciate it!

I've found a fair number of relatively small errors/duplications in the list so far (I'm probably almost halfway through a Celt playthrough), so I'm not sure whether this is one of them, but I can't find the below area in the Southwestern Zone. Any help (screenshots showing the exact location would be great) will be appreciated - cheers! "SOUTHWESTERN CRAGS — Endurance +1"

From Slarty's and my own research in the scripts, although the day triggers relating to town damage aren't visible anywhere in the scripts for some towns (Krizsan, Delis, Shayder, Sharimik, Aminro, Lorelei, Gale, and Greendale), it looks like Jeff didn't make any changes to the town destruction schedule compared to the original A3. So, the info in my old A3 topic here should still apply.

I found a few items (excluding those found in merchant inventories per your stated rule) that weren't in the list. The only ones I can recall right now: 1) A second Swamp Shoes (in an inn in a small town, I think lying on the floor, but I don't remember which town) 2) A second Ten Blessings Band (if you rob the beggar near Moon) 3) A second Mercuric Plate (on the ground next to Sulfras - must kill her to get it) 4) A fifth Crystal - Luck (attack the merchant settlement in the mountains north of Sharimik) Fantastic work!

Thanks as always, Randomizer, and for linking this to Strategy Central.

Anyone got one? In particular, "iampoor" still works, but "iwanttobestronger" (which awarded about 500xp in prior games) doesn't.

Right, that's what I assumed was going on with most of the inconsistencies between the game and this list. As to the Ivanova quest reward, it's +1 Hardiness, not Resistance - so it's not a game bug after all. Thanks! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also, a few items missing from the list: 1) Swamp Shoes (in an inn in a small town, I think lying on the floor, but I don't remember which town) 2) Venomous Blade (when Hawke's ghost appears in the Manse's statue hall, approach the northeast statue) 3) Stability Girdle (in an outdoors stone circle on an island north of the Distant Hut, with the Orb of Thralni and sufficient Luck(?)) 4) Granite Girdle (dropped by a prototype golem in the Upper Golem Factory, after pulling the lever in the secret room just north of the stairs down) 5) Mauler's Ring (read the book "Secrets of Wainscotting," then search the ground behind the Wainscotting inn) 6) Blessed Armor Band (in a chest past a secret switch in the SW corner of the Remote Cavern pillar room, with Dispel Barrier L3) 7) Blessed Breastplate (in a chest in the E part of the Guarded Tunnel) 8) Crystal: Vahnatai Lore (in a chest in the center of the factory's Golem Spire)9) Crystal: Vahnatai Lore (in a chest in the council hall in the SE quarter of Ghikra, past the barriers) 10) Crystal: Resistance (on the ground past a secret switch in the NE rock formation in the Great Circle) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ And some miscellaneous corrections/additions to the list: 1) The rune disk near Torria that teaches Summon Shade needs 18 Arcane Lore (including Vahnatai Lore, but not Sage Lore), not 17 as shown in the list. 2) Attacking the drakes guarding the Chaotic Halberd gives Dread Curse. 3) Clicking on the eastern of the two green crystals in the final SE room of the Defiled Crypt gives one point of Vahnatai Lore. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, thanks. I've also found a few errors in your list, but I'm not sure you're planning to to update it anymore. Either way, it's great.

Ivanova's quest doesn't give any Resistance (or other skill) points as a reward, although it increases all party members' resistances by amounts that seem to reflect a "hidden" 1-point Resistance increase. I know Jeff never reads these forums, and I don't have or plan to get a Steam account, so how could I report this bug to him? EDIT: Not a game bug; the quest correctly awards +1 Hardiness, not Resistance.

Errata: 1) Sara (in Shayder) is missing from the list of mage spell trainers (pretty average - Bolt of Fire through Spray Acid). 2) Velnas should be in the mage spells list, not the priest spells list. 3) Zachariah should be in the priest spells list, not the mage spells list. 4) The Moon spell-teaching "stands" are placed in the incorrect lists - the priest spells stand should be moved to the mage spells list, and vice versa.

Ward of Thoughts is listed twice, while Ward of Steel should be moved to where the erroneous second Ward of Thoughts currently is. Great work!

Incredible and appreciated work, as always. Some questions as I plan my munchkin party: 1) Which of the below rewards add the listed skill points to all party members, and which only add the skill points to one party member? i) Drake Lord Blessing (1 point of Blademaster/1 point of Spellcraft) ii) Ivanova's "steal book" quest reward (1 point of Hardiness - not Resistance as noted in the list) iii) Daltrey's "hidden giants" quest reward (1 point of Lethal Blow) iv) Swamp ogres' "kill vampire" quest reward (1 point of Lethal Blow) 2) EDIT: I've confirmed that the Swordmage trait grants an additional allowed encumbrance amount for spellcasting purposes of 10% per trait point, as opposed to the 5% incorrectly cited elsewhere (see here under the "Traits" section for that incorrect cite). The 10% was also applicable in Avernum 1:EFTP and Avernum 2:CS. 3) What is the Shift-D code (or other specific method) to manually edit the current Day? Re: 3), I'd like to recreate the town "decay" timetable as I did for the original Avernum 3 (see here). Also, as someone who likes to take his time exploring every square inch of a game and completing every quest without ever needing to consider time constraints, it would greatly increase my personal enjoyment of the game. Yeah, I know the changing world is the big unique thing with A3, but though I'm sure I'm in the minority in this, A3 is my favorite Spidweb game despite that mechanic, rather than because of it. Anyway - Slarty did a quick review of the script files to find all "day" conditional references (see here), but those only appear for 18 of the 26 towns that originally had time-related effects in E3/A3; still, as he notes, other effects (for those 18 towns or for others) may be hardcoded in the game and therefore not visible in the scripts. Also, thanks to Brood_Star, I've found where Jeff indicated there are no cheats to "alter the general timeline" in a Steam discussion (see here). However, that's not quite clear - he's talking there about resurrecting characters that had already died, but I'm more interested in reverting the current day to an earlier day to prevent future deaths/town changes. That all said, is there a way to manually edit certain game files to achieve this? I can't imagine it's impossible, but it would be really, really disappointing to me if it were - easy options to reset the current day were included in both E3 and the original A3.

Thanks, Slarty! I just loaded up character creation to mess around a bit, and had forgotten how expensive Luck was in A4 (at 4 skill points/level to start) compared to most other SW games - so that's yet another reason not to bother with Luck in favor of other useful skills that definitely aren't bugged. Appreciate the quick reply!

Excuse my necroing this truly ancient topic, considering it's pinned and my question is directly relevant - but could Slarty or someone else who had tested the effects of Luck in A4 confirm whether Luck is actually practically useless as implied in the current topic (posted by Slarty on 6 Jan 2006), or is in fact pretty amazing as described in this other topic (posted by Slarty on 25 Dec 2005)? The two topics directly contradict each other as to whether Luck actually increases character armor (+1/point), to-hit/dodge (+2%/point), F/C/E/mental resistance (+1%/point), and stun/poison/acid resistance (+3%/point). I'm planning another playthrough of A4 after many years, and remember it was almost the last SW game that was released with fairly glitchy/broken mechanics and UI systems (in my opinion), so I wouldn't be surprised to find Luck in fact does not grant the bonuses implied in the in-game skill description - I'd just like to confirm before I plan to pump 10 or so points into Luck for each toon. (And of course, this was only 11 years ago, so I'm sure people will remember exactly what was going on... I'm an optimist.) Cheers!

I've been trying to determine the exact second strike chance % each point of QA gives in Geneforge 4, and can't find it anywhere on the forums. It does seem significantly nerfed compared to G3 (which I just finished) - in G3, with QA 10, I was getting a double strike at least half the time, but with the same QA 10 in G4, it seems more like 20-25%. It's probably not a good sign nobody answered this question two years later, but just in case - can anyone confirm? I'd try to research this myself, but have no idea where I'd find this info in the game scripts.

This is the second time I'm necroing this thread, but again, it's for a good cause. I'm preparing another playthrough of G4 and again found this discussion about the possible discrepancy in Slarty's excellent guide (see link/discussion above), and from looking through all the game scripts, I've figured out why the reputation in the guide seemed to be off by 2 points: giving Fackler at least one research note in Chapter 2 gives -1 to reputation as listed in the scripts and Slarty's original forum post above (not +1 as listed in the guide), and the Chapter 1 ending total in the guide's "Powergaming" section should in fact be 104 (not 102, due to an apparent math error). The net effect of these two corrections would still leave you with the "powergaming" end-of-Chapter 2 reputation total of 120 in the guide. I just wanted to point this out for reference (whether or not Slarty is interested in correcting the two errors in the guide itself), since this is a stickied topic. Cheers!

Hopefully he'll put the correct information back in for all scarabs with v1.0.1, as he's already said he's correcting all tooltips.

Thanks for the clarification - I also realized after I posted that it might in fact be 1.5 turns/skill level, not 1.5 turns/character level, which as you say is still very strong, but not nearly as insane as it's implemented currently. With these changes, my 1.0.1 playthrough would've probably seen me as a Tinkermage, Khalida, and Nathalie - Khalida hits COTF, I hit Charge Weapons, Nathalie does what Nathalie does, and enemies have a very bad day. Thanks again to Jeff for dropping by the forums and considering the feedback, and for a solid ending to the Avadon trilogy!

If I'm reading this correctly, that still seems pretty OP. As with version 1.0, given the long duration of the skill (at character level 1 you'd get an average of 6 turns of the skill, while at level 30 you'd get 48 turns - even more than my Silena has now from my above example), you could just activate Charge Weapons before a battle, then have every attack do double damage after entering the next battle - including on the first turn. Or am I missing something? Either way, thanks for taking the time to consider feedback!

On this topic, my Silena at Level 29 has modified attributes of Strength 11, Dexterity 44, Intelligence 12, and Endurance 12 - i.e. I raised almost exclusively Dexterity and almost never Intelligence at every level up - and her Charge Weapons skill (at max skill level 4) still lasts for 31 turns.

You'll have a chance to get it when you complete Khalida's side quest.

Kelandon - remember that you can simulate the in-game trainer character by pulling up Shift+D and typing "retrain." I've used that cheat myself for testing purposes, and it has exactly the same effects (and the same "attribute cycling" bug that's been reported earlier and described in detail by Slarty) as using the trainer character.

Personally, my problem with Shamans is their fragility - they're the only class that doesn't have a "damage resistance" skill set in their Efficiency tier. By end game, this makes them extremely fragile across the board (including to both physical and magic/elemental attacks) compared to every other class. I think your suggestion to tweak Nature Mastery to include damage protection would be welcome. As far as their weak damage output, I haven't used Shamans much at all (mostly because of the above issue), so maybe others can add to that.

Jeff - right, my bad; I meant Steel Discipline and not Lightning Discipline. I did kind of like exploiting this bug, but thanks for your feedback and the fix! So while we've got your attention, on an unrelated note (but still on the topic of game mechanics feedback) - did you have a particular reason for removing the to-hit chance percentage feedback from the in-game "text box"? Removing this info from in-game data frankly seems like a step backwards.

Yeah, I assume it was +5 in the beta, but he found it overpowered and nerfed it for the release version. Thanks again for putting together the useful info, as usual.